‘I’m not going to act the lady among you, for fear I should starve.’
Forty-three hours later and Nina was still a bit starry-eyed and kiss-sore from the cab journey as she headed to Worcester Park on Saturday evening with her overnight bag and very low expectations for the evening ahead.
She had strict instructions to go straight to the All Bar One in nearby Sutton to meet Chloe because ‘if you swing by the house to dump your stuff and the girls see you we’ll never get them to bed.’
Though she’d take the truth to the grave with her, the thought of a quiet Saturday night in with Chloe and Paul and maybe a takeaway curry and a film on Netflix would have been a lot more appealing. Especially as Nina really couldn’t drink more than two small glasses of wine if she was spending all of Sunday afternoon and a significant part of Sunday evening being tattooed.
She also wasn’t in the mood to spend an evening fending off the attentions of any lone wolves on a Saturday-night prowl. Nina was never going to find her one true love in an All Bar One in Sutton on a Saturday evening. Even if he did make himself known to her, Nina would have to reject him on principle and even though he wasn’t her one true love, she couldn’t stop thinking about Noah. Specifically, being kissed by Noah and Noah saying with a laugh as the cab dropped her off first, ‘I’m so glad that we didn’t wait until the third date to get up to a little bit of funny business.’
There was going to be a third date. Not even a non-date but a proper date. Or Nina hoped that there was going to be, but it hadn’t even been forty-eight hours so it was too soon to make plans. Forty-eight hours was the minimum industry-standard waiting period before contacting someone you’d been on two dates with to enquire about their general well-being and to lock down a third date.
Of course, Noah could have got in touch with her. Nina had hoped he would, but he hadn’t. Probably because he was very busy with work or else when he’d replayed their date, from the first sight of the Ye Olde Laser Experience poster to Nina standing on the pavement and waving goodbye as he sped off in the cab, he’d decided that he didn’t want the third date.
Maybe the kissing had been substandard compared to what Noah was used to, although Nina had never had any complaints about the quality of her kissing before.
Nina wasn’t used to these doubts. She didn’t like them at all. Didn’t like that Noah could make her feel like that girl who’d once thought that a Saturday night out in Sutton was the best of times.
It was fair to say that the feelings she had towards Noah were complicated, confusing and so until she worked them out, any Sutton-based Casanovas could do one.
In fact, as Nina changed trains at Waterloo, walking against the tide of the bridge and tunnel crowd heading into the West End from the suburbs for a big night out, she could feel dread swirling about her blood then settling in the pit of her stomach like a dodgy kebab that refused to digest.
By the time she was ushered into the All Bar One on Hill Street by a pair of bouncers, ignoring the catcalls from a gang of lads smoking outside who’d obviously never seen a woman in a figure-hugging cherry-print dress with pink hair before, Nina couldn’t wait until Sunday lunchtime when she’d head back to civilisation.
‘Blimey! Will you look at that?’ she heard a woman mutter to her friend as Nina sidled past them towards the back of the huge space where a text from Chloe promised that she was waiting on a banquette with a bottle of rosé.
You’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto, Nina thought to herself then she saw Chloe waving at her and pinned on a smile.
‘Ready for our girls’ night out?’ Nina asked brightly, as she took in the five other women assembled on their two banquettes. ‘Shall we see if we can find a quiet table?’
‘Oh, sorry. Girls’ Night Out has become Mums On The Razz,’ Chloe explained with an apologetic little grimace. ‘You don’t mind, do you? You can be an honorary Mum.’
‘Or token aunt! Of course I don’t mind,’ Nina said, her smile increasing in manic intensity, as she looked around at the other women and caught a little side-eye exchanged between two of them as they took in Nina’s tattooed arms as she slipped out of her leather jacket. ‘The more the merrier, right?’
Space was made on a banquette for Nina, unfortunately on the other side of the long low table that divided the two sofas so she was on the opposite side to Chloe. She smiled uneasily at the woman next to her, Kara, and was rewarded with an uneasy smile back.
Chloe’s friends had all done NCT classes together or Mummy and Me toddler playgroups or were school playground pals so mostly they talked about their children. How little Nathan was still teething and Anjali had been slow to talk but now she never shut up. As one woman complained that her three-year-old twins hadn’t got into their first-choice nursery, Nina realised that she’d been in the same year as her at Orange Hill. She stiffened. Glanced around at her drinking companions for the night and was pretty sure that another two of them had been in the year above her at Orange Hill. It wasn’t only Noah who had bad recollections about their time at secondary school.
You are more than this, Nina told herself. You live in Bloomsbury and you work in a bookshop and you have lots of interesting friends and tattoos and you’ve recently been on two non-dates with a man who isn’t like any other man you’ve ever been on a date with.
She did feel a little better to be reminded that you really could take the girl out of the London Borough of Sutton. Then she also reminded herself that it was almost forty-eight hours since she’d last seen Noah and it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to send him a friendly text. Just thinking about what it would be like if he suddenly walked into All Bar One, relieved from his babysitting duties, was enough to make Nina ride out a little shiver and put a finger to her lips, which still seemed hyper-sensitive since the kissing they’d got the other night.
How are you getting on? Have you had to change a nappy yet? I’m in All Bar One with a gaggle of ‘Mums on the razz’. Do you want to swap places? Nina x
She deliberated over the ‘x’ for a little bit but after all the ‘xxx’-ing on Thursday night, it seemed rude not to. Nina pressed ‘send’, smiled vaguely at the mums on either side of her who were now discussing baby-led weaning, whatever the hell that was, and waited for Noah to reply with some anticipation.
And she waited.
And she waited.
And she waited some more.
Even if Noah had actually been changing a nappy, he had to be done now. Had nothing left to do but text Nina back but he hadn’t and she didn’t want to be that woman (though being back on her old stomping grounds always made her feel like that woman) but Noah’s text silence troubled her deeply.
Did he not like her, even though he was the one who’d asked her out on that first date? Had he only agreed to the second date to be polite? And what about the kissing? Had it really been below par? Nina bristled on her banquette. Well, she’d always had rave reviews before!
Nina stared angrily at her phone, then, just to check that she still had other options, she logged on to HookUpp, which she still hadn’t got round to deleting. Within seconds, unlike the text function of her phone, it was beeping with matches from guys who’d seen her picture, liked what they saw and had up-swiped her.
‘Oh! Is that that dating app?’ asked Kara, unashamedly staring at Nina’s phone. ‘My younger sister is on it all the time. Says she’s been matched with some real mingers.’
‘Mingers is right,’ Nina said. ‘Look at this one. He can’t be more than twelve!’ She clicked on the message he’d just sent her.
‘Is that … is that a penis?’ Kara shrieked and covered her eyes.
‘No biggie,’ Nina said, holding up her phone. ‘Literally. It’s just a dick pic.’
There was a chorus of shrieks then Chloe said proudly, ‘I live the single-girl life vicariously through Nina. She has the best stories. Tell them the one about the bloke that worked in the betting shop.’
Noah might not have texted her back but that was all right because Nina was wild and free. The token single girl mining her rich seam of bad dating stories (‘and that’s when he decided to rest half a pint of lager on his erect penis and that’s when I decided to make my excuses and leave’) for the horrified delight of Chloe’s friends. She could feel their smug satisfaction that they were already matched up and would never have to log into HookUpp, or worse hook up with someone from HookUpp.
Nina never minded providing the floorshow; often at work, if the shop was quiet, Posy and Verity would beg for a story from her dating repertoire, and now it broke the ice.
It didn’t take long for Chloe’s friends to realise that underneath the pink hair and the tattoos, Nina was a right laugh. And Nina realised, with a little shame, that Chloe’s friends were perfectly lovely and that when it was almost impossible to get a babysitter and you were usually in bed before News at Ten because none of their kids would actually sleep through, then Saturday night at All Bar One in Sutton was the equivalent of a week in Las Vegas.
They’d all bonded by the time they were deep into the third bottle of rosé, Nina desperately trying to make her second and final glass last as she and Chloe’s best friend, Dawn, chatted about how Nina could optimise Happy Ever After’s social media and start racking up followers who would hopefully all want to buy romantic novels. Dawn had set up an Instagram account for her two French bulldogs, Eric and Ernie, and in the space of a year had over fifty thousand followers and companies sent her free stuff, everything from organic dog treats and cotton hoodies to flea treatments. She even had partnership deals so she was more or less getting paid to post pictures. Nina couldn’t even imagine how Posy might react if she came up with a new revenue stream for the shop – she’d probably have to have a bit of a lie-down.
‘It’s all about the hashtags,’ Dawn said. ‘And follows. I follow pretty much anyone who’s ever posted a picture of a dog on Instagram.’
Despite all of Nina’s misgivings, it had ended up being a great night. It would have been an even better night if she’d been able to drink more, she thought as she stood at the bar to get her round in and see if they were still serving anything in the way of bar snacks. Chloe was absolutely hammered and she needed something to mop up the alcohol before Nina could even think of getting her in a cab.
Nina had to make do with some sparkling water and a couple of bags of kettle chips and turned round to snake her way through the crowd when she knocked into a man who’d taken a sudden step right onto Nina’s foot.
‘Ow!’ she squealed as she drenched his shirt with sparkling water. ‘Watch it!’
‘You watch it!’ he snarled and turned round and knocked into a group standing behind him who told him to ‘watch it’ too.
Nina blinked, shook her head then nearly dropped what was left of her sparkling water. There were still echoes of the sixteen-year-old boy who’d first asked her out at a school disco. His hair was starting to recede, his slight frame and face now a little paunchy, and he’d acquired a certain set to his jaw like he was gritting his teeth all the time. It was clear that he didn’t recognise her so she could slip away and he’d never be any the wiser but she couldn’t stop the high-pitched ‘Dan?’ that came out of her mouth.
She saw recognition finally dawn on his face. Shock. And finally resignation. ‘Nina,’ he said flatly. ‘It’s you.’
‘One and the same,’ she agreed.
It was almost ten years since they’d broken up; ten years since Nina had given Dan a really garbled explanation as to why she was breaking things off and Dan hadn’t listened to a word she’d said. He had kept begging her to change her mind but Nina had been resolute in a way that she hadn’t been before … or since.
And of course they’d bumped into each other a few times after that until Nina had moved away from Worcester Park. It hadn’t taken long for Dan’s reproachful sadness to give way to a kind of cocky one-upmanship especially after he got engaged to a girl called Angie, then married, then the two children. Everything that he’d wanted so much.
Now, Nina and Dan moved to one side so they weren’t blocking the main route to the bar and Nina could get a proper look at him. He was only thirty-one but the disappointed, bitter air about him made him look older.
But Nina didn’t think that the years had been that kind to her either. ‘So, how are you?’ she asked brightly, because she always wanted Dan to be well. ‘How are Angie and the kids?’
Dan’s face darkened. ‘We’ve split up.’
It was a long story that boiled down to a few unhappy facts. Angie had been seeing someone behind Dan’s back. Then she kicked him out of the house that he paid the mortgage on and he’d had to go to court to get access to his children.
‘Oh, Dan, I’m so sorry,’ Nina told him with genuine sincerity.
‘Yeah, well, you should be,’ he snapped and yes, she’d done something awful to Dan all those years ago but it was ancient history. It wasn’t even like she’d forced Dan into Angie’s arms on the rebound. There’d been two years between being dumped by Nina and Dan getting with Angie and while Nina was sorry about how she’d ended it, she was also still relieved that she had ended it. She hadn’t felt guilty about it for quite some time now.
‘Oh please. I don’t know how many more times I can apologise for breaking your heart all those years ago but it was years ago,’ Nina pointed out reasonably. She deserved a medal for staying calm and not raising her voice. ‘This is all water under the bridge. Come on, we both know that if we had stayed together, had gone through with it, we’d have ended up miserable.’
‘But you don’t know that, do you?’ Dan asked sadly without the belligerence or the cocky one-upmanship and a lot like the young man he’d been ten years ago. Her childhood sweetheart. Her fiancé.
Nina put her hand on his arm. ‘Yeah, I do know that,’ she said firmly.
‘Because you’re so happy now.’
It was Nina’s eternal dilemma: she wasn’t happy, but then again, she wasn’t unhappy. She was still somewhere bang in the middle but she knew one thing for sure: she’d been right to walk away from Dan all those years ago, walk away from Worcester Park and the safe, dull life that felt like it was choking her. She still had some way to go before she achieved her dreams but standing here in front of Dan made her realise how far she’d come.
‘Look, I’m really sorry that it didn’t work out with Angie,’ she said again and, as she walked off, Dan called something after her but Nina didn’t pause, she just wanted to get Chloe upright and leave.
In the few minutes that she’d been at the bar, the last bottle of rosé had caused carnage. The mums had all reached the ‘I bloody well love you, you’re my best mate, you are’ stage of drunkenness and they all wanted to hug Nina and tell her that she was an amazing girl and that she needed to find a nice bloke and have kids. ‘It will be the making of you.’
Nina didn’t point out that she was already made. She was done. Apart from her not-yet-complete Wuthering Heights sleeve, she was a finished product. She also hoped that she wasn’t this annoying and repetitive when she was drunk.
‘Another bottle for the road!’ Kara shouted but Nina was having none of it.
‘No more,’ she said sternly. ‘You have to be at a soft-play centre in a few hours.’
There were groans all round and Nina was able to get them all to the Ladies for last wees, then outside where it was a tedious business deciding who was sharing a cab with who. Except Chloe who wasn’t sharing a cab with anyone as she was looking so green that no driver wanted to take her.
It was inevitable that during the long, staggery walk back to her house Chloe would throw up at the side of the road. ‘There there,’ Nina said, rubbing her back in soothing circles. ‘Better out than in. No! Don’t take off your shoes. You think you want to but you really, really don’t.’
Chloe straightened up and wiped her mouth and what was left of her lipstick with the back of her hand. ‘I love you, Nina,’ she said. ‘I bloody well love you.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Nina muttered, as she looped her arm round Chloe again and encouraged her to take a few tottering steps. ‘I get it. Everybody bloody loves me.’